“For now,” I said, careful not to overreact to the club chaplain, as if that would somehow invoke the anger of God or something. “We underestimate our enemies, we overestimate how long we stay alive.”
“Find the middle way.”
As always, whenever he spoke, all eyes turned to Red Raven.
“The man who strikes too quickly winds up in the same spot as the man who sits too long. The challenge is not to know what to do, but when to do it.”
Well, that sure did give us some useful insight. I’m so glad I have a philosophy teacher to guide me along the way.
“Butch,” I said, staring right at the man I believed to be the rat. “What do you think?”
He grunted.
“Lane,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement reflecting his belief that the club president should make decisions, and everyone else was just there to fall in line. It was fucking infuriating, not the least because I believed he was ignoring my question.
“Okay,” I said, deciding that acting as I was would ultimately undermine my goals. “Lane. Apologies. Go ahead.”
It looked like Lane wanted to ask me why I’d acted so brashly, but I think he knew well enough something was going on outside of the club contributing to this.
“We do need to strike back, and we need to do so within the next three nights,” he said. “We need this to be swift and quick.”
Something clicked in me as soon as I heard him say that we were going to strike in the next three nights. The rat in here would know that. The rat in here would inform the Saints. And all of the prep work we were doing right now… I had to pull Lane aside after the meeting and tell him we basically had to treat it as a thought exercise and not as the real thing. We couldn’t use this in the field, or we would set ourselves up for failure.
“In line with Axle, though, I feel like tonight would be our best bet. It will be quick, it will be swift, and it will be when the Saints would least suspect it, given that they know we like to discuss club business at this time. Any thoughts?”
With tunnel vision, unlike anything I’d ever had, I watched everyone across the table from me. Butch, Father Marcellus, Red Raven—it kind of worked out pretty well that the three of them sat side-by-side-by-side, making it much easier for me to analyze all of them at once. Of course, if I had to pick one, I already knew which one.
None made any motion. It was Patriot that spoke first.
“I think we should wait a day, man,” he said. “We’re acting on impulse and emotion.”
“Yes.”
Butch. You’re the rat.
“It would make sense for us to approach this without anger clouding our judgment,” Father Marcellus said. “With it, we will put ourselves in danger and ultimately hurt ourselves.”
“I’m open to hearing alternatives.”
The conversation continued like so, with most of the dialogue settling on tomorrow night instead of tonight. But at this point, that was all secondary for me. I didn’t care when we struck so much as who struck with us.
“We’re putting it to a vote,” Lane said a couple minutes later, something I barely heard as I watched my suspected target. “All in favor of tonight?”
Only Lane and I raised our hands.
“All in favor of Friday?”
Everyone else raised their hands.
Except, strangely, Red Raven.
“Red Raven?”
“Things will not calm in the span of one day,” he said. “We should wait until we are of calm mind. And then we should wait one more day to make sure our calm mind is genuine.”
He had made his statement, but in true Red Raven form, he did not seem intent on pushing it further. Ever the smart one, he recognized that he was not in a position to press his views.
